Want to see skills-first hiring in action? Look to the states

Amidst a heated election cycle, one rare area of bipartisan agreement is that it’s time to remove the grip the bachelor’s degree has on the labor market. Both presidential candidates have touted skills-first hiring strategies during their campaigns, and business leaders and states alike are “tearing the paper ceiling” – shifting away from traditional practices that rely on education and pedigree as proxies for a worker’s actual skills and capabilities.

The private sector is often cited as the early initiator of the skills-first talent movement, and credit where credit is due. Big companies like Bank of America, Delta Airlines, Trane, and Walmart – to name just a few –  have made headlines for putting skills at the center of their approach to hiring and retaining their workforce. 

But the real momentum for skills-first strategies is coming from a place that isn’t always seen as innovative: state governments.

Over the past two years, there’s been rapid growth in states reinforcing their commitment to access to public sector employment for the more than 70 million Americans who are STARs – workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes instead of a bachelor's degree. From spring 2022, when Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed executive orders to spark the shift to skills-first practices, we’ve come to a point where half of all states have passed measures to tear the paper ceiling or reconsider hiring practices that have disadvantaged STARs. 

This groundswell of support spans both sides of the aisle, and for good reason. A shift to skills-first talent strategies is not only a sensible public sector reform to find qualified workers in a tight labor market, it can also unlock economic mobility for millions of STARs around the country. And most importantly, the early signs from the states are promising. 

As a STAR myself and having spent the past nine years working for the public sector, I have seen firsthand the impact of skills-first practices on creating new pathways into public sector employment for people who have historically been locked out from those careers. At Opportunity@Work, where I now work, our team is closely following the impact of skills-first shifts on economic mobility for STARs. Here’s what we’ve found so far.

Job postings are more likely to be open to STARs in the 12 months following state action 

Of the 15 states that took action to remove degree requirements from job postings before July 2023, their data revealed that jobs were more likely to be open to STARs in the year following that action. Even more exciting is that the jobs not requiring a degree that were posted during this period were not just entry-level roles, but a mix of middle and upper wage jobs.

STARs are gaining access to good jobs in state government

In fact, in reviewing the jobs that were posted by those 15 states from the time of their action through July 2024, many of them are among the highest in-demand roles in the public sector, and pay well. Additionally, these roles also typically required degrees prior to the state’s action, showing that the states are making good on their promise to open more roles to STARs. These are the types of roles that we’ve seen workers with degrees move into to gain economic mobility for years; now, those same opportunities are available to more people.

States are backing up talk with action 

Removing degree requirements alone will not result in more STARs in state government, even if they are meant to be a powerful and public signal that the state is open for business. In fact, many states, like Connecticut, already have policies that degrees are not required for public-sector jobs. But Connecticut has joined the movement anyway because leaders in that state recognize that degrees are still being preferred, even despite those policies. 

The more states commit to tearing the paper ceiling, the more their fellow states are following. Inspired by the actions of their peers, states are undergoing reviews of current requirements, reporting on differences across agency requirements, and undergoing the difficult process of updating personnel roles and their classification systems to revise minimum requirements. State HR teams are building new templates, training programs and guidance for analysts and hiring managers to help them transition to a new way of hiring and advancing based on skills. At the same time, state teams are joining forces to better understand current behaviors, test new approaches, and learn from – and about – new practices through activities like legislature-required task forces or communities of practice. 

In my own career journey, I was fortunate to have had supervisors at the State of Idaho who were able to see me for the skills I brought to the state and supported me in my career journey. But not all STARs are fortunate to receive the same support or have the opportunities that have been presented to me. The act of reforming a whole state’s hiring system will take time (more time than any of us would like) and ongoing commitment from citizens, STARs, state officials and civil servants. But these promising developments show that there will be significant points of progress along that journey that will show that it is working. And with states leading the way, the shift toward a skills-first labor market feels that much closer.

Paige Bongiorno, now a director of the STARS Public Sector Hub at Opportunity@Work, has nearly a decade of work in public-sector hiring and workforce development roles for the State of Idaho.